The year 2025 marks the 40th anniversary of Dr Reiner Knizia’s career as a board game designer – his first published game, Complica, was released in a magazine in 1985 (although he’d self-published games before then as well).

Since then Knizia has designed and published over 800 games, many of which are critically acclaimed. Put simply, Reiner Knizia is the landscape on which all other modern designers build their houses.

To celebrate Knizia’s career and back catalogue, Meeple Mountain are taking things back to basics to consider the ABC of Reiner Knizia: one game for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet.

This time: The Letter ‘C’.

C – Carcassonne: The Castle (2003)

A recent interview with Knizia suggests that he steers clear of games by other designers partly to avoid compromising his own creativity and partly because he hasn't much time around playtesting his own designs.

Sometimes, however, he looks up from his drawers of works-in-progress (expanded from 40 to 80 during the pandemic) to take a reading of the tabletop weather. The results are games that employ mechanisms of the moment whilst feeling distinctly Knizian at the same time. For instance:

• The Quest for El Dorado is Knizia’s take on…

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The year 2025 marks the 40th anniversary of Dr Reiner Knizia’s career as a board game designer – his first published game Complica was released in 1985 in a magazine (although he’d self-published games before then as well). Over the last 40 years, Knizia has designed and published over 800 games, many of which are critically acclaimed. Put simply, Reiner Knizia is the landscape on which all other modern designers build their houses.

To celebrate Knizia’s career and back catalogue, Meeple Mountain are taking things back to basics to consider the ABC of Reiner Knizia: one game for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet.

This time: The Letter ‘B’.

B – Battle Line (2000)

Knizia’s oeuvre in B-major includes many strong contenders, but it’s 2000’s Battle Line that claims the spot with its tense two-player experience.

In Battle Line, opponents play cards to their side of a line of 9 flags, winning a flag if they have the strongest poker hands of three cards assigned to it. The player who first claims 5 of the 9 flags or 3 flags in a row wins the game. Spicing the mix are tactics cards that mess with the rules, as well as the ability to claim a flag by proving that your opponent can’t…

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Over the last 40 years, Knizia has designed and published over 800 games, many of which are critically acclaimed. Put simply, Reiner Knizia is the landscape on which all other modern designers build their houses.

To celebrate Knizia’s career and back catalogue, Meeple Mountain are taking things back to basics to consider the ABC of Reiner Knizia: one game for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet.

This time: The Letter ‘A’.

A – Age of War (2014)

But what about 2003’s Amun-Re I hear you ask? Yes, it’s only the first letter of the alphabet and already we’re off to a controversial start. Hear us out though: whilst undoubtedly good and deserving of Alley Cat Games’ recent Amun-Re 20th anniversary edition, Amun-Re isn’t in Knizia’s top 3 auction games. It’s not even his best auction game set in ancient Egypt (I’m looking at you letter 'R'). 

Age of War on the other hand… well, that’s one of Knizia’s strongest small and speedy dice games, which is quite the achievement in a very populous category. A reimplementation of…

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In recent years publisher EmperorS4 has been a reliable source of interesting small-box games, their Hanamikoji series being a standout.

Hanamikoji is one of the best two-player games around, and for my money it’s easily the most memorable I-cut-you-choose game I’ve ever played, at once uncompromising and comedic. Geisha’s Road added new cogs to Hanamikoji’s original tug-a-war battle; it lacks the same lacerating edge but is more thoughtful and knotty. Meanwhile Shadows in Kyoto is the adopted sister, more of a Hanamikoji-flavoured take on Stratego than a blood relation, and slightly weaker for it.

2024 brings a new baby to the family in the form of Kimono Memories. It’s an altogether softer experience from the plots and subterfuge of its elder sisters whilst still retaining some of the same features in its chubby little face. This fundamental difference might put you off or you may find the friendlier gameplay more inviting.

A Snapshot

This time round, you and your opponent are photographers, visiting Kyoto and trying to amass the best photo portfolio of traditional kimonos, the national dress of Japan. 

As with Hanamikoji and Geisha’s Road there are a series of battlegrounds you’ll be vying to win, although in this case it’s not the favour of individual geisha you’re looking to gain but photos…

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not my favourite Shakespeare romcom (hello Ado!) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream by designer and publisher Icerain Lin is not my favourite card game. One of these is a close-run thing, the other less so. 

Puck It and See

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a small box card game where players try to empty their hand of cards (card shedding, for example UNO) by playing combinations of cards to the table, always ensuring that the sets of cards they play are higher or one level up from the cards that are already on the table (ladder climbing, for example SCOUT). If I play a pair of fours, then you could play a pair of sixes (higher cards at the same level) or a run/straight of three cards (one level up from a pair, for instance one, two, three).

This isn’t too tricky to start. Players begin each round with 12-14 cards, the majority of which can be one of two numbers. A 3 can be rotated to be a 4, a 5 can pivot to a 2 and so on.

As the round goes on, however, your options become more limited whilst the demands of…

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Thomas Wells

What was your introduction to modern board games?

I grew up in rural Wyoming, so my access to gaming was filtered through my dad, who grew up playing games. I was dropped into Avalon Hill wargames by him when I was about 9 (which was not the most optimal experience--what 9-year-old relates to Afrika Korps?)

Then, later on, I found a group of fellow dorks in high school, and we went in on a web order of Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition. We spent many weekends lasering and war-sunning each other into oblivion. For a long time, I thought that conflict-heavy games were the only types of games there were. There was no FLGS for me growing up, so BoardGameGeek became my portal to a mythical land of cardboard and bits.

What are your feelings on gateway games?

Board gaming has been a very lovely experience for me, and I enjoy games all across the spectrum. As a rabid fan and lover of games, I remind myself often that some people are just not interested in moving through the gateway to more complex stuff. With that in mind, I’ve never had a bad experience introducing someone to a Knizia game. High Society, Lost Cities, The…

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The Cartographers system is fantastic. Simple, compelling, creative; it ticks a lot of boxes. Here at Meeple Mountain we’ve already got reviews of the original Cartographers and sequel Cartographers Heroes (with Map Packs 1-3). But 2022 brought three new Map Packs so we’ve equipped our crayons to brave the unknown and document these new environments for the benefit of our readers. Plus at the end we take a quick look at all the currently available mini-expansions. It’s a tough job but someone’s gotta do it.

Map Pack 4 – Frozen Expanse: Realm of Frost Giants

Frozen Expanse introduces three small changes to the standard game: 1) ‘scouted’ squares on the map indicate which terrain type must be placed there; 2) a frozen lake provides a bounty of coins if surrounded; 3) two new ambush cards and one new hero card join the battle.

The scouted spaces (in setting-speak, fragments of known landscape from a previous expedition) restrict the central puzzle in a way that often makes seasonal scoring harder. Most of the time they’re great, adding a satisfying challenge. Occasionally they accentuate those moments when the draw of the explore cards edges the game into more frustrating territory, since scouted spaces can get in the way. Often in both the base…

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Released in 2008, Dominion is the original deck-building game, spawning hundreds of imitations and innovations. It remains, however, the best example of the genre, the definitive undiluted deck-building experience (see David McMillan’s review of the base game for information on how to play and the game itself).

Despite the randomness that comes from all the shuffling, success in Dominion is down to skill. A good Dominion player will wipe the floor with a poor player every single time.

So how do you get good at Dominion? We’ve put together a strategy guide for those looking to build their deck-building skills and become the masters of their domain.

The (Big) Elephant in the Room

There’s a common misconception that there’s a single dominant strategy for Dominion that ‘breaks the game’. Even David encountered it in his review.

Big Money.

Big Money is a strategy where the player simply buys nothing but Treasure cards and then Provinces (the highest value Victory cards in the base game, worth 6 points each). Not only is this an incredibly boring way to play, it’s also not an effective way to win.

Pure Big Money succeeds because it’s possible regardless of which Kingdom cards are available. It’s a…

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There are many things that annoy me about the tabletop content creation space:

• The blurry line between honest, subjective critique and paid-for promotion.
• The cliché of telling all the rules, providing a gnat’s whiskers of critique and calling it a review.
• The self-satisfied disdain of those who don’t include any suggestion of how a game plays because they’re producing critique, not a review.
• The repeated use of the phrase ‘a knife fight in a phone booth’ and variants there on.
• People who call them ‘meeples’ when the etymology of the word comes from ‘people’ which is a word that already indicates a plural (click here for the etymological explanation). It’s a set of meeple people, not meeples peoples!
• Companies who feel that a hobby-beloved word they neither invented themselves nor used in their official rulebooks for years after its creation is suddenly theirs to own and legally enforce. Such money-grubbers deserve to have their ‘followers’ desert them.
• The occasional returning idea that reviews should be purely objective, ignoring the fact that all the things we feel and consequently produce stem from our personal experiences.

[Editor’s note: At this point the Meeple Mountain editorial team decided to spare the reader from the increasingly warped rantings of the writer and…

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I’m always fascinated by the way board games can create a sense of place that extends far beyond their cardboard components.

I’m not talking about narrative-based games that tell a story around a setting or legacy games which build up an environment over a series of sessions. What interests me is how games can build a sense of place through their mechanics alone, without the aid of characterful illustrations or paragraphs of text. Games that feel organic in the fictional communities they create.

For all my love of Carcassonne, and for all that you’re building a landscape of places and people, it never feels populated. Dice City, Machi Koro, Alhambra, Tiny Towns, Quadropolis, Ginkopolis, Sprawopolis and more – they all tackle the subject of building communities, but they never actually feel lived in.

Suburbia does it with the narratives that emerge from tile adjacency impacting population and income. Little Town’s direct geography creates unplanned pockets of industry and production sprouting up amongst the game’s natural features. Santa Monica’s occasional stretches of emptiness or dilapidation create spaces for cliques to congregate. The job roles in Villagers open further avenues for…

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Ex Libris: Revised Edition is a game that peaks at university, getting looser and duller with every passing round.

Ex Libris: Revised Edition has such a strong theme and central puzzle that its problems are mostly forgivable.

Mostly.

To Start at the Beginning

You’re a librarian, looking to win the local librarian contest with your liberally stocked library of lively library books, some of which are liable to be literary liabilities.

To win, you want a collection of books arranged stably over three shelves in alphabetical order. But you don’t just want any old books: your library should be full-to-bursting with the judge’s favourites and your own specialism, have minimal banned books, and an otherwise good mix of the game’s book categories. The player who best satisfies these six scoring criteria wins.

This is the heart of Ex Libris, and it beats strong. Since all your book cards must be placed orthogonally next to other book cards, the first half of the game is spent estimating where to place cards in the hope you don’t block any future scoring opportunities.

I’ve got a ‘J’ card already on the shelf and a great ‘M’ card in…

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Back in 2020 I swooned over Village Green, a delightfully constricting game of card placement and fluid scoring designed by Peer Sylvester and published by Osprey Games. 

Fast forward to 2023 and Osprey are back with Village Rails, designed by Matthew Dunstan and Brett J. Gilbert. It’s a sequel, of sorts. Like its sibling, Village Rails provides players with the puzzley experience of creating a grid of symbol-splattered cards with scoring cards around the edge, all wrapped up in a tidy and tiny package.

It’s good: compelling, compact and cranium-caressing. Worthy of the ‘Village’ name. And yet the experience it provides is markedly different and whilst I like it quite a bit, there is no swoon.

All aboard

The goal of Village Rails is points, tracked on gorgeous scoring dials shaped like old-fashioned train tickets. They’re a delightful highlight of an excellent production.

On each of your turns you take a ‘tracks’ card and add it to your expanding 3 x 4 grid. These cards have two train tracks traversing them, with a track entering or leaving each of the card’s sides. By the end of the game you have…

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Voidfall – David Wood

Man, oh man, was I ever excited to have this baby show up on my doorstep, and it did not disappoint.  Touted as a Euro 4X space game, Voidfall is a beast both in terms of table space and complexity, but it was so worth it.  The core mechanic is playing Focus cards to take actions.  Each card has 3 actions listed on it, but players can normally only take 2 of them.  The number of Focus cards that can be played each cycle varies, so players will have to plan out their strategy each cycle by selecting which cards they will play, and just as importantly, the order they will play them.  IMO, it’s this planning feature that makes the game shine. 

The game comes with a bunch of scenarios (solo, co-op, and competitive) of varying complexity, including a solo tutorial that helps new players navigate the learning curve.  There’s a bunch of iconography players will need to become familiar with, but after a while it becomes second nature.  Combat is simple and completely deterministic.  In fact, there’s an app you can download that automatically determines the outcome for you.  And because each game is limited to 3 cycles, this a 4X that doesn’t out stay its welcome. 

…

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